Author: Louis Pelingen

  • TRACK REVIEW: OONA. – DARAMA

    TRACK REVIEW: OONA. – DARAMA

    Written by Louis Pelingen

    Throughout the 2020s, the P-Pop space has continued to craft more talent worth seeking, especially across the girl groups that have their names established in their own way. Bini, VVINK, and Kaia are big examples of this, as they bring a different sonic presentation that reflects upon their identity as a group. This becomes a statement that OONA. – a newfound girl group consisting of experienced dancers and idols – is working through, all reflected upon their debut single, “DARAMA”.

    Right from the jump, OONA showcases a unique flair in their performances that immediately makes them stand out, as there’s a distinctive tone to each member’s voice, allowing their group dynamic to land with charm while not taking away their individual personalities. 

    OONA’s sweet presence on the microphone is also helped out by Neil “NJ” Subong and Eiron “pxyche” Reyes – the same people who produced for acts like Hev Abi, E-Kove, and Zae – providing an approachable beat with enough glossy keys and synths to add to OONA’s exploration of their feelings towards someone they like. Acknowledging this fluttery feeling of love, but they’re rather unsure of how to deal with it.

    The overall concept of exploring one’s feelings is quite inspired for OONA’s debut track, because as much as their hearts are fully exposed in this introductory song, they are still navigating their approach as vocalists and performers in their own right. There might be flubs in their delivery, but it paradoxically works nonetheless. After all, exploring one’s feelings takes quite a while to settle in, and for OONA, they’ll definitely figure things out in the long run.

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  • TRACK REVIEW: School Girl Classic – Tomorrow

    TRACK REVIEW: School Girl Classic – Tomorrow

    Written by Paolo Elwick

    Tomorrow usually doesn’t take long to arrive, but for fans of Cebu-based indie rock band School Girl Classic, it took six years before “Tomorrow.”

    During this period, the band’s members went their separate ways: one moved hundreds of kilometers away, another now plays for multiple other bands, and one is balancing a career in design while still making music. But as each carved out their own path, the future of School Girl Classic turned uncertain. And yet, even as the band drifted apart, the voice at the center of their music still stayed the same—Hana, the fictional schoolgirl through whose eyes their stories have always been told. She has always been the band’s narrator and mirror, a medium to communicate the relatable uncertainty that comes with growing up. In many ways, her story feels inseparable from the band’s own, making their return with “Tomorrow” not just about picking up where they left off, but about revisiting a character who, like them, has had plenty of time to change.

    Their growth is given the opportunity to shine through the single’s lyricism. On the one hand, it reads like a conversation with an old friend, full of updates, questions, and reminders. But on the other, it builds a harmonic mantra through tasteful repetition. Together, these give the song a friendly and approachable sense of familiarity that perfectly matches the instrumental’s various emotional ebbs and flows. And with a laidback drum loop as the steady foundation, the strings are given ample space to shine with riffs that build rhythm, and licks that emphasize and stress like sonic punctuation marks. 

    But “Tomorrow” isn’t just about growth; it’s also the band’s honest thoughts on time, waiting, and coming back—letting listeners know through Hana that the years in between their releases don’t just feel like gaps that they’re rushing to fill. The band chooses to acknowledge the distance, the change, and the uncertainty that have shaped who they are now.

    In the end, School Girl Classic’s “Tomorrow” is a reminder that coming back doesn’t mean returning to the exact same place. Things have shifted, people have grown, and even Hana, the fictional schoolgirl, now speaks with a little more clarity and intention. Waiting, then, becomes part of the story rather than something separate from it. With that in mind, “Tomorrow” feels less like a comeback and more like a continuation—just one that took its time to arrive.

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  • TRACK REVIEW: Training Wheels – simple socks

    TRACK REVIEW: Training Wheels – simple socks

    Written by Julia Harumi Kudo

    “Training Wheels” begins with the clicking sound of a bicycle’s freewheel. The song pedals a new echelon for Iggy San Pablo, the Toronto-based Filipino musician and Rusty Machines frontman, now recording under the name simple socks. Before the instruments break away in the track, there’s a nervy tick of motion without propulsion, that even after your body has stopped pedaling, your motor memory is still trying to justify itself. A siren shrills within earshot, then someone honks as the voices blur, but the city continues to move, ignoring them all. Then the guitar interrupts the street’s noise, sharp and precise with a crisp rhythm, while the drums stall like an engine refusing to start; every sound seems to hesitate between movement and paralysis. And simple socks’ singing is restrained, as though driven by survival instinct, like the voice of someone desperately and politely trying to suppress their emotions so as not to explode in public. 

    What makes “Training Wheels” so compelling lyrically is how it consistently frames migration as this never-ending process. Iggy San Pablo writes about distance without romanticizing sacrifice this time. “It’s a long distance away/Still call you anyway” conjures a forlorn intimacy with phone calls from overseas during different time zones. One person is wide awake, while the other is fast asleep on the opposite shore. As the song reaches its midpoint, it becomes clearer that the very essence of conviction is slowly coming into focus, culminating in the lyrics, “The pavement’s rough, but I know I need to move along.” He repeats the phrase “I need to move along,” but it no longer sounds like a source of motivation; rather than an affirmation, it starts to sound compulsory, a survival strategy.

    But there is irony at play in all of this. Expressing the alienation of immigrants through English, a language inherited and symbolizing both hope and the scars of colonial rule, is already analogous to surrendering a part of oneself to translation. The memories of diaspora are rarely passed down in their entirety. “Training Wheels” lives precisely within this contradiction. To live between two countries means not fully belonging to either, caught between the homeland from which one grew up and left and the hostland that still treats you as provisional. However, this song refuses to succumb to self-pity. After the final repetition, what remains is not despair, but momentum. The freewheel clicking at the beginning returns as a metaphor for the momentum sustained by past efforts, even if the direction is uncertain. Iggy San Pablo’s greatest strength as a songwriter lies in his restraint. He never exaggerates his experiences into grandiose political revelations, and this stance remains unchanged. The production stays lean and restless, the guitars don’t smooth out the arrangements but rather create gaps, and the drums are always in danger of completely losing their rhythm. “Training Wheels” remains hopeful precisely because it refuses resolution. Iggy San Pablo does not land on wholeness by the end of the track. He simply keeps pedaling. In lesser hands, that ambiguity might feel unfinished. Here, it feels honest.

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  • ALBUM REVIEW: Petalbyte – <10><

    ALBUM REVIEW: Petalbyte – <10><

    Written by Adrian Jade Francisco

    There are albums that orbit the current electropop, glitchpop, and hyperpop system—built from a familiar vocabulary of glossy synths, glitch-warped vocals, and internet-age immediacy. ‘<10><’ by Petalbyte sits right in that circuitry, carrying the kind of ambition that suggests a debut overclocking its own design. 

    Straight out of the startup screen, “intro & consum” opens to dictate the identity of Petalbyte’s catalog, shimmering layers, tight drum programming, and abrupt transitions. The mix sounds like someone taught a laptop how to have feelings and then immediately overwhelmed it in “girl just quit music already.” Those aforementioned production personalities are seen further in “this song found you” with its digital friction of a chorus. “Close enough” anchors the album’s volatility with an infectious hook that restrains the maximalist bursts. 

    Although it is only 33 minutes and 33 seconds long, Petalbyte succeeds in maintaining momentum without any noticeable drag. She manages to translate the genre’s sonic dialect that feels distinctly hers. It remains evident how the electropop artist has honed her sound into a production style and character she can truly claim as her own, despite how ‘<10><’ can remind you of Ninajirachi or underscores.

    Amid an oversaturated era of electropop projects, ‘<10><’  successfully cuts through with a surprising sense of clarity. It doesn’t overwhelm the space—it simply renders itself more sharply than most of what surrounds it.

    Petalbyte wastes no time in making her artistic intent clear from the outset of her debut album. There’s no sense of tentative introduction; instead, the project arrives fully formed, already operating with electronic music that feels deliberate rather than exploratory.  If anything, you could say, “girl, just keep making music.”

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  • MIXTAPE REVIEW: Dexter1ne&only – 1nderfuL

    MIXTAPE REVIEW: Dexter1ne&only – 1nderfuL

    Written by Noelle Alarcon

    Pampanga’s Dexter1ne&only gained recognition in 2022 for his hit “In Luv:” short and sweet, pushed forward by trap beats, and dripping with codeine. After dropping a single in March, he finally returned to music this May with the mixtape ‘1nderfuL.’ In all its 23 minutes and 11 seconds, the rapper flaunts a more complex and sonically realized direction in his discography. 

    ‘Gunaw’ starts the mixtape off with a bit of familiarity due to its similarity with his older music. It’s a song that lays the ground for the more upbeat innovations in the tracks to come. Arranged on a straightforward beat that eventually envelops you in the fog-like synths that drone on and provide texture to the track, it’s as crunchy as the peso bills in the artist’s pocket. 

    Dexter1ne&only’s pivot to mumble rap and pluggnb is an intentional, well-thought-out choice. Every element chosen in this cocktail of synths, leads, and airy 808s makes every track essential to the listening experience. It’s also in this chosen avenue that he’s able to express the lightness of vulnerability in the mixtape’s underbelly, like asking someone if they’ll be there to support until the end, or being unable to wait just to see someone you love that you end up asking to FaceTime.

    All nine tracks on ‘1nderfuL’ are incredibly diverse, each one of them able to stand on their own as they possess their respective sonic identities. But of course, there are standout tracks as well where Dexter1ne&only and the rest of the Stunna4Life roster truly outdid themselves. 

    “Yao Ming,” featuring fellow S4L artists GOget Cal2x and Allfred, speaks of success through the symbol that is the Chinese basketball player—and even sprinkles in a bit of longing and worries that come with encountering triumph. There’s a poetic quality that comes to the trio’s rawness; “malabong di ko ‘to gawin ‘gang pumuti yung uwak,” they repeat as they embrace the exhaustion that comes from counting money.

    “Frog Eyez” with Allfred and YPC is another exceptional track, starting off with a series of plugins so amusing you wouldn’t be able to predict how the rest of its runtime will unfold. Laden with multiple sound effects and percussion that just work together, it’s like an auditory representation of the high that they experience. There’s charisma to be found in its self-proclaimed hedonism; ‘yan ang guapanese.

    ‘1nderfuL’ goes to extremes and explores its depths; it explores the casual playfulness of artistry and values staying true to oneself, above all—may it be through authentic accents or stories of humble beginnings. While sharing stories of success, it’s also not afraid to echo hardships and the anxieties of being human, which make it all the more raw, its cool exterior aside.

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  • TRACK REVIEW: Project Yazz – Ningning

    TRACK REVIEW: Project Yazz – Ningning

    Written by Louis Pelingen

    Ever since 2021, Project Yazz has been best described as a band whose joy in making music comes from freewheeling expression, with varying instrumentalists who play around from time to time. Vocalist Faye Yupano and bassist Burgan Nunez, the mainstays in the project, never stay in a fixed atmosphere, thematic approach, and cast of players, as they are always shifting around with ease. Despite that, one aspect always continues to stay around in their music: warmth. 

    This year, the band steps up in imbuing that warmth in lusher soundscapes. “Haraya” evokes that firsthand, yet the following single, “Ningning”, takes it up a notch. Faye Yupano’s vocals gracefully express a wistful longing under the glinting presence of the stars, a gentle emotion amplified further with supple arrangements with crisp grooves and gleaming brass swells that continue to gradually ramp up.

    However, this cascade of potent ideas never reaches its transcendent state, where the production does not fully expose the wells of yearning that Faye Yupano embodies in the song, and the expanded arrangements don’t allow their rich textures to be heard. Instead, it feels distant, constantly on the cusp of reaching a stirring resolution, yet it never truly gets there.

    As it stands, “Ningning” becomes a fascinating growth and challenge for Project Yazz, as they are willing to experiment with their warm tones in grander escapades. Succeeding in placing down this tender desire that’s as simple as it is evocative, yet it doesn’t flourish the way it should. It might result in the song whose resonance becomes wishful thinking under the starry night, yet even then, it sparkles just enough to see how it could have shined brighter. 

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  • TRACK REVIEW: Hijo – Ain’t Got What I Got

    TRACK REVIEW: Hijo – Ain’t Got What I Got

    Written by Paolo Elwick

    After the viral success that is “Sorbet,” DJ and hip-hop artist Hijo continues to prove that he’s more than just your average internet influencer. With club-ready beats, earworm hooks, and playful, sometimes out-of-pocket TikTok videos, Hijo has steadily built a reputation as both a standout performer and a digital personality. Now, he’s back to keep the energy high with another club anthem — this time enlisting rap collective Fresh-iLL Club for the bouncy “Ain’t Got What I Got”.

    Much like his previous release, “Ain’t Got What I Got” is an animated track overflowing with the energy you’d expect from Hijo and his vibrant personality. With an instrumental that blends booming drums, triumphant horns, and dynamic adlibs, it feels like a fresher, funkier tribute to the boom bap style. And much like the emcees who’ve championed boom bap in the past, Hijo is bombastic and in-your-face from the jump, delivering an unapologetic PSA to dance as he proudly proclaims, “If you ain’t shaking ass, get the fuck off the dance floor.” 

    The verses that follow share the same bold bravado as Hijo begins trading bars with the diverse cast of Fresh-iLL Club. While the former feels perfectly at home on the track, some members of the latter lack the energy and presence to survive the beat’s punching onslaught. As a result, the energy of the track can sometimes peak before cratering. The good thing, however, is that it doesn’t take long for the track to get its groove back. Before you realize it, you’re probably already back shaking ass on the dance floor.

    And that’s where “Ain’t Got What I Got” shines — it’s a hypnotic anthem that builds on Hijo’s natural magnetism and presence to create a track that brings funk, energy, and braggadocio to the parties and dance floors of Manila’s lively nightlife. But more than just that, it captures the city’s after-hours pulse by pairing swagger with an infectious bounce that feels impossible to resist. And in the process, Hijo cements his place in the local music scene as an artist who understands exactly how to move a crowd digitally and in real life, by consistently turning his charisma and instinct for high-energy records into tracks that resonate with audiences far beyond algorithms. So if you frequent these spaces, get ready to hit the dance floor because Hijo isn’t waiting for you to stay still.

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  • TRACK REVIEW: Asher – Pollen

    TRACK REVIEW: Asher – Pollen

    Written by Julia Harumi Kudo

    “Pollen,” composed by Asher, Areli, and Juicingjuicy, is a rumination on a song in which they refuse a memory to be simply remembered. Thus, they go and breathe it all over again, even when it stings. The song turns with the slow, circular logic that endings and beginnings are trick mirrors than stages of the same cycle, and where longing for someone, like pollen, is both natural and difficult to resist. Realized on a skeletal chill-hop rhythm and clad with the flexibilities of Neo-Soul, the trio somberly revels inside the Petri dish of modern R&B, with Asher and Areli’s production leaning towards texture rather than structure. With organic patience, the guitar arrives almost unbeknownst, while the synths forage underneath with velvet layers perpetually glued to the mix. And yet, for all its fawning, there’s something vaguely obscured here. The vocals are often fractionally veiled; phrases fade into texture, and you notice yourself feeling the words first before even fully understanding them. It’s a little frustrating to be able to catch the fragments of the yearning spiel enough to know there’s an intention, but not enough to withhold it fully. But when the song chooses to reveal itself—“I need, I need you so”—it does so with a startling clarity that it almost feels sacramental as if that line alone is intentionally meant to survive the haze and the rest belongs to someone else. 

    Drawing from the title alone, “Pollen” alludes to a collapse—fallen, yes, but also feathered, dispersed, made airborne. The word blushes a little and hides inside itself: to fall in love again, to have already fallen apart, and to still be suspended somewhere in between. And just like pollen, the pining in the song acts like a natural phenomenon. Our body resists even as it needs, pure animal instinct. Areli gets back to this contradiction without resolving it: desire shaking hands with dependency, tenderness going up against doom. “I don’t trust the time when you’re not around / I’m fallin’ apart again.” It sounds simple and almost childlike, but such straightforwardness is what allows us to let our human sensibilities feel, and that’s the closest we can get to being nearly transformed. We’d be neither healed nor broken, but airborne.

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  • EP REVIEW: WILHELMINA — Book of Spells

    EP REVIEW: WILHELMINA — Book of Spells

    Written by Noelle Alarcon

    The Philippines has an incredibly rich, complex history—despite the multiple attempts to put down the Filipino identity, it is the spirit of resistance that has pushed us to continue fighting, time and time again. 

    For Filipinos outside of the homeland, that sense of pride, of kinship, can look a little different, although the thought remains intact: we have always had our own world and will stick by it no matter what, unnecessary foreign interventions aside. In New Jersey-based producer WILHELMINA’s latest EP, “Book of Spells,” he summons these roots and blends them into webs of jersey club and hard drum.

    Akin to being possessed by the spell of a babaylan, “Book of Spells” is over 20 minutes of thumping transcendental beats. Shrouded in mysticism and the promise of a good time, booming 808s are showered in hard kicks and the sound of indigenous Filipino instruments. WILHELMINA trades the more clean, polished sounds of percussion for drums that have more of a roaring echo, contrasting with calming prayers and various sounds of brass that accent each beat.

    The EP stands out from the rest, and not just because of its Southeast Asian roots. It is not merely confined to the genres that describe it; it doesn’t have to force or impose its identity upon the listener, and it executes its brashness magnificently. Its trance-inducing basslines are reminiscent of the hypnotic nature of budots, and so are the different ways he uses the sounds found in rituals to exaggerate and build up to certain points in each track. There are standout tracks, like opener “Divine Hand,” which samples Kelis’ “Milkshake” and weave it with indigenous drum beats that become more complex as its runtime moves forward. “Booty Hypnosis” is true to its title; the bass-boosted murmurs become louder and louder until the track finally shifts its gears and mesmerizes with its array of sounds.

    There are plenty of ways to play with jersey club, its template being a flexible canvas that will take on anything painted upon it well. However, there are points in the EP where the repetitiveness becomes an element that drags the track on for longer instead of expanding on its sonic possibilities. It’s a tricky endeavor to figure out how to piece these sounds together, and WILHELMINA’s attempt to incite spells of dance works well, for the most part.

    The EP’s cover is an array of golden tikbalangs, and the mysteries of Philippine occult—in superstition, they are mythical creatures that lead travelers astray. That’s what this collection of breaks and beats does to the listener; “Book of Spells” unlocks an experience that can only be felt beyond the physical realm, hauling you across a bewitching journey of wonder that has been inside you all along. What joy it is to make the most out of being spellbound.

    Artwork by kosmos.khaos

  • ALBUM REVIEW: Lecx Stacy – The Folkhouse

    ALBUM REVIEW: Lecx Stacy – The Folkhouse

    Written by Lex Celera

    For Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Lecx Stacy, sonic experimentation is no longer just an exercise but a recurring theme in his body of work. Pallid shades of ambient, breakcore, emo, and folk are rendered onto the canvas, resulting in something that can’t be neatly put into a single category. His work has been found somewhere between the gravitational pulls of Clams Casino, A.G. Cook, Jean Dawson, Deb Never, and Code Orange Side Project NOWHERE2RUN.

    Beyond genre shifts, the intention is clear: his sound is a refraction of his personal and shared history – as a first-generation Filipino American, as an artist exploring what he calls “inherited memory” – rendered in its full palette. 

    In both form and approach, the layers across each track come and go in measured amounts, almost as if they were solidified like shards. Of what they could represent, the artist leaves just enough room for it to take shape in the listener’s mind.  

    If his debut EP ‘Face Plants’ serves as an antechamber to the world of Lecx Stacy, ‘The Folkhouse’ is an inner dwelling that retains a sliver of its original foundation, sort of like a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. Vestiges of past work form a resemblance to the bricks that have been laid out in ‘The Folkhouse.’ 

    As Stacy explains in a press release, “The album as a whole explores grief, heartbreak, and eventual acceptance, all framed through a parallel between my life and my father’s.” In ‘The Folkhouse,’ Lecx Stacy vacillates between textured abstraction and lucid instrumentals, drawing on a broad range of influences to further explore something personal. His body of work, then, is a response to stimuli, an answer to a call, expressed in song. 

    The opening track “Feign Death, I Await Her,” settles on abject atmospherics from the jump to set the tone, and serves more as an interlude, similar to “…” Meanwhile, “In a Hail of Bullets, She’s the Gun” comes across as central to the whole project in its robustness of sound; it has a bit of something for everyone that has found a taste for Lecx Stacy’s sound, similar to “Thine Own Accord” in his previous project. 

    In fact, the guitar instrumentation is foundational to ‘The Folkhouse’ and draws the most attention across the whole project: “Winter, A Wilted Flower” and “In A Hail of Bullets, She’s the Gun” develop this idea most. The guitar work in “Safe In Your Hands, I Clasp” gives the track buoyancy amid the weight of the drums. Meanwhile, the use of tremolo in “Testament, A God Fear & Rifle” suggests another dig at his history as a Filipino transplant in America, as built on from his recent projects, most especially his 2021 EP ‘Bundok.’ It’s the tightness of this intention that gives Lecx Stacy’s body of work tensile strength beyond navel gazing.

    But as ‘The Folkhouse’ and his previous projects have shown, this drive towards finding answers comes across as asymptotic: close, but not completely there. Nothing is entirely resolved; the shards remain shards. In fact, one might argue that the thematic backbone feels more pronounced in his body of work compared to this latest album. Which opens up the question: how long will this exploration last, and what can be excavated beyond what is already found?  

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